Americans Who Mostly Get Their News from Social Media Are Less Engaged, Informed on Current Events

Recently, in just the latest bid to address concerns about misinformation on the platform, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will no longer recommend civic and political groups to its users and will take steps to reduce the amount of political content users see on their personal news feeds. Zuckerberg told investors that individuals “don't want politics and fighting to take over” their user experience, but what entails civic and political groups has yet to be defined. While the spread of misinformation has been linked to a rise in political polarization, whether the proposal will have the desired effect remains to be seen.

The big tech companies have found themselves in the crosshairs of government scrutiny as they contend with misinformation on their platforms about the 2020 general election and the Covid-19 pandemic. Americans generally hold unfavorable opinions toward social media platforms; for example, a recent poll conducted by the University of South Florida School of Public Affairs in partnership with Cyber Florida found that 73% of respondents believe that “there is a lot of false information about COVID-19 on social media.” 

But these caveats have not stopped most Americans from relying on social media to get their news. About 53% of Americans rely on social media platforms like Facebook for their news, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey.

Despite Facebook weathering significant criticism for its role in peddling misinformation on its platform, it remains a go-to source of news for roughly a third of Americans. (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit round out the top five social media platforms that Americans use to get their news.) Facebook has spent billions of dollars and hired a slew of experts to help address the well of misinformation on its platform, but misinformation is even more popular now than it was during the 2016 general election cycle, according to research from the German Marshall Fund Digital. 

"Disinformation is infecting our democratic discourse at rates that threaten the long-term health of our democracy,” the organization observed. “A handful of sites masquerading as news outlets are spreading even more outright false and manipulative information than in the run-up to the 2016 election."

The organization’s findings appear to be in line with Americans’ general views: 59%, Pew observes, question whether the news they receive on social media platforms is accurate. Just 39%, by contrast, say they believe the news they receive is accurate. Additionally, most Americans say news on social media has not helped them better understand current events. That finding mirrors a July 2020 Pew report that found Americans who get their news predominantly via social media tend to be less engaged and less knowledgeable about current events. 

“These U.S. adults, for instance, tend to be less likely than other news consumers to closely follow major news stories, such as the coronavirus outbreak and the 2020 presidential election,” Pew notes in its report. “And, perhaps tied to that, this group also tends to be less knowledgeable about these topics.”

Perhaps most strikingly, those who rely on social media as their main source of news are less likely to follow the biggest storyline of the year: the coronavirus pandemic, which as of this writing has claimed the lives of more than 431,000 Americans to date.

“This relative lack of attention to news goes hand in hand with lower levels of knowledge about major current events and politics. Across the nine months of study and five separate surveys, respondents were asked 29 different fact-based questions that touch on a variety of topics related to the news, from economics to Donald Trump’s impeachment to the COVID-19 outbreak and more,” Pew points out. “Across these 29 questions, the average proportion who got each question right is lower among Americans who rely most on social media for political news than those who rely most on other types of news sources, except for local TV.”

Interestingly, while those who rely on social media are also more likely to have heard about false or unproven claims, they are less likely than other groups (including those who rely on cable television as their main source of news) to be concerned about the impact of “made up news,” or “fake news,” to use a phrase so often used by former President Donald Trump, whose open assaults against the truth itself have left an indelible remark on national discourse and emboldened news literacy advocates all the while.